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Bakkhik Apollon

As I have stated before, that while Hyperborean A pollon gives a sense of the disconnection and distance of A pollon during his seasonal role, likely in residence to a degree among the blessed isles as he is enshrined in Hyperborea, I also consider Apollon at this time quite mystic, and very Bakkhik. This is my Lord in company of his brother that as Diodoros speaks that in the campaign of Dionysos (via speaking of him as Osiris when speaking of the mystic god) that Apollon was always with his company, leading the chorus. Here we see Apollon leader of initiates and leader of the chorus as we can imagine him in Samothrake where he is the father of the korybantes.

This image is on par with our understanding of the god as lord of the cemetery which he was in Hellas, Ionia, and Italy as Apollo Soranus. Yet it is his fall festival as Apollon Karneios that sets the transition up. His herds and crops are reared to maturity of harvest, the season of reaping has come after which he departs. His departure assures the moist season planting and the mysteries of the seed within the earth and the fertile ecastic mysteries of Dionysos. Yet his festival Karneia assures his final turns in his season and we see imagery if dancing maidens bearing wide baskets on their heads as Perses frightens away satyrs that are likely on the fringes as the season prepares to turn. But not yet…Apollon holds the pipeline, the symbol for the timing of the end golf the dry season and the beginning of the moist season. It is literally his movement and exchange with Pan the proceeds things. Then he no longer holds back the advance of satyrs but is part of the company of Dionysos. Growling, Wolfish, howling, singing.

The locks of Karneios are not lain beautifully or carefully dressed in coiled locks…they are wild, and likely partially dredded, flowing around his face. Karneios gives us the view of Bakkhik Apollon, here is our clear vision him in all his glory. Even the Boedromia in Athens where he is the god who presents fear as eagerly as the dark countenance lord bearing the aegis as we see him in the Iliad.

Even the association is so close in the Pyanepsia where beans, so closely associated with the dead are prepared in thanksgiving for him with the adorning of his sacred bough the day before the procession of Dionysos and Ariadne. I always got the impression it was these same bough carried in honor of Dionysos and Ariadne. Karneios through Pyanepsia I consider the festivals of the Bakkhik Apollon…and again with his birth in Prostaterias at the festival Prostateria in the sacred land of Dionysos: Thebes. This is his Bahkkik cycle, and is really my favorite as this is of the herder and reaping lord, the horned Apollon, the wolfish one.

It is true that the muses raved like maenads when first they encountered Dionysos….and I am certain Apollon to raved in Bakkhik rejoicing. Which is why he fathered Delphus on the first Thyiad at Delphi. Perhaps during this seasonal frenzy of his where he is wild and most free. My lord the freer.